Written and Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck | 106 min | ▲▲▲▲
Did you know there was a new Pedro Pascal movie in cinemas? Until a day or so ago, I didn’t, and I do this semi-professionally. This picture is from a pair of veteran filmmakers who had a huge hit with their MCU movie, Captain Marvel, who have their roots in indie dramas, and who’ve drawn one of the biggest stars of the day to their scrappy, fizzy, and bloody throwback. Clearly it has no budget for marketing, which is too bad: Freaky Tales is both an oddity and a genuine pleasure set solidly in the VHS zone.
It’s told over four chapters, all set in Oakland, California, in 1987, against the backdrop of actual events. The first two chapters feel like odes both to Oakland culture of the day as well as cult cinema of the era — a little bit of the fantasy nocturnal energy of The Warriors, a dash of the science fiction weirdness of Repo Man, a slice of the relentless tunefulness (and Nazi bashing) of The Blues Brothers.
We get a look at the punk scene — with characters sporting some unlikely-for-’87 piercings — where they come together to crack the heads of a crew of skinheads, and then we hang with a couple of burgeoning rappers, two women who step up to a battle on a local stage. This is all cool, but despite compelling performers like Ji-young Yoo, Normani, and Dominique Thorne, it feels like set-up.
Turns out that’s what it is — background for the final two chapters, where we get to know Pascal’s Clint, a loan shark goon getting out of the business. He still owes money to That Guy (hey, Ben Mendelsohn in sleaze mode) and needs to do one last job to get anywhere close to squaring it.
How his life intersects with the events of the final chapter — exploring the legend of NBA all-star and enhanced individual Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) — is a whole lot of fun, spawning high-toned action sequences, a lot of grue and gore, gangster grit that wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino picture, with a dash of psychokinesis out of something like Scanners.
I’ll admit, I’m right in the pocket for the cinematic era to which this movie is paying homage, but I don’t think you need to have been around in ’87 to appreciate what it’s trying to do. This is a movie where the plotting, opaque in the first half hour, pays off with cascading joy in the last, cleverly referencing what’s gone on before and looping back to remind you what’s up.
It’s also happy to let just a few things linger, like the mystery of what is the number one classic Hollywood underdog movie. A cameo from a famed Oakland resident who went on to greater glory is just an added cherry on this particular cinematic sundae.
